7 ms·

US sells 30-year bonds at highest borrowing costs since 2001

65 points by petethomas 2mo ago

https://archive.ph/cbzl0 https://archive.ph/cbzl0

downrightmike 2mo ago
Great economy you got there. Couldn't bribe Japan to not sell off their US Bonds and now they need to attract bag holders by raising rates.
rbanffy 2mo ago
Hear that? It’s the sound of an empire collapsing.
- zeroonetwothree 2mo ago
  Did it collapse in 2001?
  - nostrademons 2mo ago
    Kinda, yes. Osama Bin Laden's express goal was to bankrupt the U.S. by provoking it into a war it could not win. Three wars in the Middle East later, and $33T in additional government debt, and hear we are.
    - lopsotronic 2mo ago
      9/11 was arguably the most effective asymmetric attack in the annals of military history, in terms of simple weapon effect. At the same time, it spells out the limits of seeing the world in terms of weapon effect: an American population brutalized by twenty years of occupation; Israel binding tight alliance with Saud; a resurgent heretic Shia power; a meteoric rise of China - historically far more of a foe to Islam than the West. None of these are what you might call brilliant for Bin Laden's ultimate goals. When we fire a gun we don't know what that bullet does twenty years from now.
      - rbanffy 2mo ago
        9/11 eroded American democracy in ways that wouldn’t be considered possible. What we observe now is just one more chapter of a long fall that has started in the mid 1980s. Increasing income inequality, breeding dissatisfaction to the point a former reality show character gets elected president. This all was done by many hands - Putin being an obvious one also destabilising the European Union and NATO, and China acquiring the manufacturing prowess the US decided wasn’t worth the effort anymore, and so on. Add to that what seems to be the last straw, a unified payment system that doesn’t uses the dollar as its currency, and you have the perfect storm. Was it Stalin who said the capitalist will gladly sell you the rope you’ll use to hang them?
        lopsotronic 2mo ago
        "What fool will sell us his secrets?" is what Stalin is said to have replied when Khrunichev (aviation minister) and Yakovlev proposed buying British engines in 1946 for their Mig design, which (with British Nene engines) would become the best-in-theatre Mig-15. As with most Stalin quotes the attribution is pretty weak, but we do have multiple sources. The rope line is Lenin's, supposedly. The earliest verified appearance is October 31, 1955, in The Commonwealth, journal of the Commonwealth Club of California, where Major George Racey Jordan attributed to Lenin: "When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract. Now, Lenin died in 1924. So the closest match near as anyone can tell is a note in Annenkov's memoir, published in Novyi Zhurnal 1961: capitalists would supply credits and technical equipment that would restore Soviet military industry for future attacks on those same suppliers "they will work on the preparation of their own suicide." What is happening with 21st century America is also extension of the larger narrative of the end of the european era, which, if you put that exact phrase in Title Case, was the actual verbatim title of my main intro European history textbook, as a freshman undergrad . . in the 1990s. So that's a thing. Today we are in the middle of history, no doubt about that: the transition of global hegemon[0] for the first time in the nuclear age. That's a ticklish proposition at the best of times, and it would have been lovely if the leadership class had stepped up. Unfortunately, well . . . where we are now, it's going to often be China's leadership steering humanity around the thermonuclear bonfire[1]. Let's call the whole thing the end of the western era, a phrase which makes me sound like a Nazi, but apparently if there is one thing everything can agree on it's that the age of the west is ending. Now, the difference between me and a Nazi is that I interpret "Age of the West", as, "humanity has been `the west` and then there are other guys", and that the end means that age is over. If I were a Nazi, I interpret "End of the West" as literally existential, which would make me - surprise! - escalate my actions and rhetoric. A huge part of the art of reactionary and revolutionary movements across history is removing any idea of an alternative, of a compromise benefitting all. And in the current era, it is so dangerously easy to add and remove ideas from the populace. [0] Which, I want to state openly, was not written in the stars. As late as 9/11, America could have made the 21st century the American century, but, well, we decided to go play in the sandbox instead. Now, why we did that, that will become an area of future study for centuries. [1] A fact that they are quite aware of, as they watch the American situation. "Why don't they crush Taiwan like a ripe fruit?" - because PRC don't have confidence that American leadership won't jump right to the top of the escalation ladder if a CVBG is mission killed. So they wait.
  - ceejayoz 2mo ago
    Did the British Empire collapse during the Suez Crisis of 1956, when it was embarassingly unable to open a major shipping chokepoint via military force? Did we know it had by 1957, or did that take a little longer to confirm the shape of the decline?
    - kasey_junk 2mo ago
      India was already independent by then. That seems like it would have been a pretty strong signal.
      - ceejayoz 2mo ago
        Didn't we rather embarrasingly withdraw from Afghanistan recently after two decades of trying to build a functioning government, only to have the Taliban take it back in a matter of days? You're kinda making the point I'm making; the sound of an empire collapsing is often a long rumble, not a sudden snap.
        kasey_junk 2mo ago
        If your suggestion is that the US might be in decline and there have been lots of signals of that going back 30 years, I’m pretty sympathetic. But if it’s specifically the Iran war fiasco compared to the Suez incident I’d suggest those aren’t particularly the same.
        ceejayoz 2mo ago
        > But if it’s specifically the Iran war fiasco compared to the Suez incident I’d suggest those aren’t particularly the same. Yes, one's a superpower failing to project power over a critical waterway to much international embarassment, the other is… oh.
        kasey_junk 2mo ago
        Did the US lose control of the most populous part of its “empire” in the last 20 years? Did it get its population and infrastructure destroyed across 2 generations in world wars in the last 50? Has the US just come off of required rationing for basic food stuffs and been running in 20 years of austerity? Or is the US still the dominant economy in the world, with a problem of over abundance of staples and stuff? The idea that late 1950s uk and the 2026 us are equivalent is laughable.
- bayarearefugee 2mo ago
  Entire global society collapse is probably less than 25 years away due to climate change spiraling out of control. Relative to that the US national debt hardly even matters.
  - GiorgioG 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - ceejayoz 2mo ago
      Isn't Europe locked in a rather unprecedented heat wave right now? Scientists did get it wrong; it's been faster than predicted. https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/scientists-have-been-underestimating-the-pace-of-climate-change/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/scienti...
      - jen729w 2mo ago
        And much of East Asia. "Potatoes ‘boil’ in the ground as record heatwave sweeps across swathes of Asia" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/13/asia-heatwave-south-korea-potatoes-boil-ground-record-heat-hong-kong-japan https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/13/asia-heatwave-...
    - anonymars 2mo ago
      Didn't we just tie for the hottest Earth month on record?
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
josefritzishere 2mo ago
The US is going the way of Zaire.
- netsharc 2mo ago
  If only it could get fucked in isolation like that country. It's basically Rome and the whole planet is its empire, whatever happens the shockwaves affect everyone on the planet.
recursivedoubts 2mo ago
[dead]
CamperBob2 2mo ago
I dunno, guys, maybe hiring a guy who bankrupted 4 casinos wasn't the right way to go after all
- lubujackson 2mo ago
  Hey, he's a businessman! He extracts value for shareholders!
- jimt1234 2mo ago
  I fully support blaming Orange Foolius for, well, everything. But hasn't every administration since Reagan contributed to this?
  - linuxhiker 2mo ago
    Yes
  - stock_toaster 2mo ago
    > Orange Foolius As a kid in the 80s/90s who spent a non-zero amount of time in a mall, I just wanted to highlight how great this name is.
    - CoastalCoder 2mo ago
      Those things were delicious.
  - mostlysimilar 2mo ago
    Not exactly. > Blinder and Watson reported that budget deficits tended to be smaller under Democrats at 2.1% potential GDP versus 2.8% potential GDP for Republicans, a difference of about 0.7 of a percentage point. They wrote that higher budget deficits should theoretically have boosted the economy more for Republicans, and therefore cannot explain the greater GDP growth under Democrats.[3] Since 1981, federal budget deficits have increased under Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, both Bushes, and Trump, while deficits have declined under Democratic presidents Clinton and Obama. The federal government ran surpluses during Clinton's last four fiscal years, the first surpluses since 1969. The deficit was projected to decline sharply in Biden's first fiscal year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_presidential_party#Federal_budget_deficits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_p...
JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
Treasuries are priced alongside term SOFR at one year [1][2]. The cost to insure U.S. debt is in line with where it's been for the last five years [3]. (And around where they were ten years ago.) This has nothing to do with investors' perceptions of U.S. credit and everything to do with the financial rates environment. [1] https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/TextView?type=daily_treasury_yield_curve&field_tdr_date_value=202608 https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/... [2] https://www.global-rates.com/en/interest-rates/cme-term-sofr/4/term-sofr-interest-12-months/ https://www.global-rates.com/en/interest-rates/cme-term-sofr... [3] https://en.macromicro.me/charts/68239/us-5year-cds https://en.macromicro.me/charts/68239/us-5year-cds
- epolanski 2mo ago
  > This has nothing to do with investors' perceptions of U.S. credit and everything to do with the financial rates environment It absolutely is related to investors' perceptions of U.S. credit worthiness. The news is about the 13th of August 2026 auction. Entities lending money to US want increasingly higher compensation, which is unsurprising considering that the US projected deficits are ballooning (an estimated 7.4% both in 2026 and 27). US has already blown past 1.8T in deficit in the first 6 months of 2026 alone. That's higher than the deficit for the entirety of 2025. Finding money to absorb all this spending is not easy and lenders are spooked by inflation and borrowing levels.
  - JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
    > It absolutely is related to investors' perceptions of U.S. credit Related to, not evidence of. I added a CDS reference which isolates the credit component. > Entities lending money to US want increasingly higher compensation Entities lending money in dollars want higher compensation. There is no evidence they demand a risk premium from the United States. What we are seeing is an increasing term premium. But that doesn't have to do with the U.S.'s perceived creditworthiness, it's a function of money supply and demand.
    - epolanski 2mo ago
storus 2mo ago
Another wave of inflation is coming in the next 6 months or what?
- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
  > Another wave of inflation is coming in the next 6 months or what? No, at least according to Treasury buyers [1]. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10YIE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10YIE
  - ceejayoz 2mo ago
    Looks right about like when we entered 2008, if you zoom out.
kasey_junk 2mo ago
It feels weird to focus on US debt here when the entire west is facing similar challenges (except Switzerland…) The UK bonds are the highest since the 90s and Japanese debt has never been higher. There is a fiscal problem but it’s not an _American_ one unless you just assume all international finance is a US issue.
- ceejayoz 2mo ago
  > unless you just assume all international finance is a US issue Why wouldn't you? 2008's collapse of the US housing market caused a global recession. It's the single largest economy on the planet.
  - kasey_junk 2mo ago
    Because the US does not control other countries fiscal policy which is where government debt rates come from. Germany and the UK have entirely different ways to determine fiscal and currency policy from each other, not to mention from the US. If there is correlation between those things it’s either by choice (the German people tieing their government to the US) or it’s demographic.
    - ceejayoz 2mo ago
      > Because the US does not control other countries fiscal policy… I can't even begin to imagine how someone says this with a straight face.
      - kasey_junk 2mo ago
        Because I don’t assume lack of agency in the rest of the world? You’ll note I put that in my original comment.
        ceejayoz 2mo ago
        > Because I don’t assume lack of agency in the rest of the world? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/us/politics/how-marco-rubio-runs-venezuela.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/us/politics/how-marco-rub... "The secretary of state effectively controls Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government. His grip on the country is a vivid manifestation of American power in the Trump era." This is but one of many examples of the broad reach of American control over other countries' policies.
theturtle 2mo ago
[dead]

65 points by petethomas 2mo ago

https://archive.ph/cbzl0 https://archive.ph/cbzl0

Great economy you got there. Couldn't bribe Japan to not sell off their US Bonds and now they need to attract bag holders by raising rates.

rbanffy 2mo ago

Hear that? It’s the sound of an empire collapsing.

zeroonetwothree 2mo ago
Did it collapse in 2001?
- nostrademons 2mo ago
  Kinda, yes. Osama Bin Laden's express goal was to bankrupt the U.S. by provoking it into a war it could not win. Three wars in the Middle East later, and $33T in additional government debt, and hear we are.
  - lopsotronic 2mo ago
    9/11 was arguably the most effective asymmetric attack in the annals of military history, in terms of simple weapon effect. At the same time, it spells out the limits of seeing the world in terms of weapon effect: an American population brutalized by twenty years of occupation; Israel binding tight alliance with Saud; a resurgent heretic Shia power; a meteoric rise of China - historically far more of a foe to Islam than the West. None of these are what you might call brilliant for Bin Laden's ultimate goals. When we fire a gun we don't know what that bullet does twenty years from now.
    - rbanffy 2mo ago
      9/11 eroded American democracy in ways that wouldn’t be considered possible. What we observe now is just one more chapter of a long fall that has started in the mid 1980s. Increasing income inequality, breeding dissatisfaction to the point a former reality show character gets elected president. This all was done by many hands - Putin being an obvious one also destabilising the European Union and NATO, and China acquiring the manufacturing prowess the US decided wasn’t worth the effort anymore, and so on. Add to that what seems to be the last straw, a unified payment system that doesn’t uses the dollar as its currency, and you have the perfect storm. Was it Stalin who said the capitalist will gladly sell you the rope you’ll use to hang them?
      - lopsotronic 2mo ago
        "What fool will sell us his secrets?" is what Stalin is said to have replied when Khrunichev (aviation minister) and Yakovlev proposed buying British engines in 1946 for their Mig design, which (with British Nene engines) would become the best-in-theatre Mig-15. As with most Stalin quotes the attribution is pretty weak, but we do have multiple sources. The rope line is Lenin's, supposedly. The earliest verified appearance is October 31, 1955, in The Commonwealth, journal of the Commonwealth Club of California, where Major George Racey Jordan attributed to Lenin: "When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract. Now, Lenin died in 1924. So the closest match near as anyone can tell is a note in Annenkov's memoir, published in Novyi Zhurnal 1961: capitalists would supply credits and technical equipment that would restore Soviet military industry for future attacks on those same suppliers "they will work on the preparation of their own suicide." What is happening with 21st century America is also extension of the larger narrative of the end of the european era, which, if you put that exact phrase in Title Case, was the actual verbatim title of my main intro European history textbook, as a freshman undergrad . . in the 1990s. So that's a thing. Today we are in the middle of history, no doubt about that: the transition of global hegemon[0] for the first time in the nuclear age. That's a ticklish proposition at the best of times, and it would have been lovely if the leadership class had stepped up. Unfortunately, well . . . where we are now, it's going to often be China's leadership steering humanity around the thermonuclear bonfire[1]. Let's call the whole thing the end of the western era, a phrase which makes me sound like a Nazi, but apparently if there is one thing everything can agree on it's that the age of the west is ending. Now, the difference between me and a Nazi is that I interpret "Age of the West", as, "humanity has been `the west` and then there are other guys", and that the end means that age is over. If I were a Nazi, I interpret "End of the West" as literally existential, which would make me - surprise! - escalate my actions and rhetoric. A huge part of the art of reactionary and revolutionary movements across history is removing any idea of an alternative, of a compromise benefitting all. And in the current era, it is so dangerously easy to add and remove ideas from the populace. [0] Which, I want to state openly, was not written in the stars. As late as 9/11, America could have made the 21st century the American century, but, well, we decided to go play in the sandbox instead. Now, why we did that, that will become an area of future study for centuries. [1] A fact that they are quite aware of, as they watch the American situation. "Why don't they crush Taiwan like a ripe fruit?" - because PRC don't have confidence that American leadership won't jump right to the top of the escalation ladder if a CVBG is mission killed. So they wait.
- ceejayoz 2mo ago
  Did the British Empire collapse during the Suez Crisis of 1956, when it was embarassingly unable to open a major shipping chokepoint via military force? Did we know it had by 1957, or did that take a little longer to confirm the shape of the decline?
  - kasey_junk 2mo ago
    India was already independent by then. That seems like it would have been a pretty strong signal.
    - ceejayoz 2mo ago
      Didn't we rather embarrasingly withdraw from Afghanistan recently after two decades of trying to build a functioning government, only to have the Taliban take it back in a matter of days? You're kinda making the point I'm making; the sound of an empire collapsing is often a long rumble, not a sudden snap.
      - kasey_junk 2mo ago
        If your suggestion is that the US might be in decline and there have been lots of signals of that going back 30 years, I’m pretty sympathetic. But if it’s specifically the Iran war fiasco compared to the Suez incident I’d suggest those aren’t particularly the same.
        ceejayoz 2mo ago
        > But if it’s specifically the Iran war fiasco compared to the Suez incident I’d suggest those aren’t particularly the same. Yes, one's a superpower failing to project power over a critical waterway to much international embarassment, the other is… oh.
        kasey_junk 2mo ago
        Did the US lose control of the most populous part of its “empire” in the last 20 years? Did it get its population and infrastructure destroyed across 2 generations in world wars in the last 50? Has the US just come off of required rationing for basic food stuffs and been running in 20 years of austerity? Or is the US still the dominant economy in the world, with a problem of over abundance of staples and stuff? The idea that late 1950s uk and the 2026 us are equivalent is laughable.
bayarearefugee 2mo ago
Entire global society collapse is probably less than 25 years away due to climate change spiraling out of control. Relative to that the US national debt hardly even matters.
- GiorgioG 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 2mo ago
    Isn't Europe locked in a rather unprecedented heat wave right now? Scientists did get it wrong; it's been faster than predicted. https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/scientists-have-been-underestimating-the-pace-of-climate-change/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/scienti...
    - jen729w 2mo ago
      And much of East Asia. "Potatoes ‘boil’ in the ground as record heatwave sweeps across swathes of Asia" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/13/asia-heatwave-south-korea-potatoes-boil-ground-record-heat-hong-kong-japan https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/13/asia-heatwave-...
  - anonymars 2mo ago
    Didn't we just tie for the hottest Earth month on record?

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

josefritzishere 2mo ago

The US is going the way of Zaire.

netsharc 2mo ago
If only it could get fucked in isolation like that country. It's basically Rome and the whole planet is its empire, whatever happens the shockwaves affect everyone on the planet.

recursivedoubts 2mo ago

[dead]

CamperBob2 2mo ago

I dunno, guys, maybe hiring a guy who bankrupted 4 casinos wasn't the right way to go after all

lubujackson 2mo ago
Hey, he's a businessman! He extracts value for shareholders!
jimt1234 2mo ago
I fully support blaming Orange Foolius for, well, everything. But hasn't every administration since Reagan contributed to this?
- linuxhiker 2mo ago
  Yes
- stock_toaster 2mo ago
  > Orange Foolius As a kid in the 80s/90s who spent a non-zero amount of time in a mall, I just wanted to highlight how great this name is.
  - CoastalCoder 2mo ago
    Those things were delicious.
- mostlysimilar 2mo ago
  Not exactly. > Blinder and Watson reported that budget deficits tended to be smaller under Democrats at 2.1% potential GDP versus 2.8% potential GDP for Republicans, a difference of about 0.7 of a percentage point. They wrote that higher budget deficits should theoretically have boosted the economy more for Republicans, and therefore cannot explain the greater GDP growth under Democrats.[3] Since 1981, federal budget deficits have increased under Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, both Bushes, and Trump, while deficits have declined under Democratic presidents Clinton and Obama. The federal government ran surpluses during Clinton's last four fiscal years, the first surpluses since 1969. The deficit was projected to decline sharply in Biden's first fiscal year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_presidential_party#Federal_budget_deficits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_p...

JumpCrisscross 2mo ago

Treasuries are priced alongside term SOFR at one year [1][2]. The cost to insure U.S. debt is in line with where it's been for the last five years [3]. (And around where they were ten years ago.) This has nothing to do with investors' perceptions of U.S. credit and everything to do with the financial rates environment. [1] https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/TextView?type=daily_treasury_yield_curve&field_tdr_date_value=202608 https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/... [2] https://www.global-rates.com/en/interest-rates/cme-term-sofr/4/term-sofr-interest-12-months/ https://www.global-rates.com/en/interest-rates/cme-term-sofr... [3] https://en.macromicro.me/charts/68239/us-5year-cds https://en.macromicro.me/charts/68239/us-5year-cds

epolanski 2mo ago
> This has nothing to do with investors' perceptions of U.S. credit and everything to do with the financial rates environment It absolutely is related to investors' perceptions of U.S. credit worthiness. The news is about the 13th of August 2026 auction. Entities lending money to US want increasingly higher compensation, which is unsurprising considering that the US projected deficits are ballooning (an estimated 7.4% both in 2026 and 27). US has already blown past 1.8T in deficit in the first 6 months of 2026 alone. That's higher than the deficit for the entirety of 2025. Finding money to absorb all this spending is not easy and lenders are spooked by inflation and borrowing levels.
- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
  > It absolutely is related to investors' perceptions of U.S. credit Related to, not evidence of. I added a CDS reference which isolates the credit component. > Entities lending money to US want increasingly higher compensation Entities lending money in dollars want higher compensation. There is no evidence they demand a risk premium from the United States. What we are seeing is an increasing term premium. But that doesn't have to do with the U.S.'s perceived creditworthiness, it's a function of money supply and demand.
  - epolanski 2mo ago

storus 2mo ago

Another wave of inflation is coming in the next 6 months or what?

JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
> Another wave of inflation is coming in the next 6 months or what? No, at least according to Treasury buyers [1]. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10YIE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10YIE
- ceejayoz 2mo ago
  Looks right about like when we entered 2008, if you zoom out.

kasey_junk 2mo ago

It feels weird to focus on US debt here when the entire west is facing similar challenges (except Switzerland…) The UK bonds are the highest since the 90s and Japanese debt has never been higher. There is a fiscal problem but it’s not an _American_ one unless you just assume all international finance is a US issue.

ceejayoz 2mo ago
> unless you just assume all international finance is a US issue Why wouldn't you? 2008's collapse of the US housing market caused a global recession. It's the single largest economy on the planet.
- kasey_junk 2mo ago
  Because the US does not control other countries fiscal policy which is where government debt rates come from. Germany and the UK have entirely different ways to determine fiscal and currency policy from each other, not to mention from the US. If there is correlation between those things it’s either by choice (the German people tieing their government to the US) or it’s demographic.
  - ceejayoz 2mo ago
    > Because the US does not control other countries fiscal policy… I can't even begin to imagine how someone says this with a straight face.
    - kasey_junk 2mo ago
      Because I don’t assume lack of agency in the rest of the world? You’ll note I put that in my original comment.
      - ceejayoz 2mo ago
        > Because I don’t assume lack of agency in the rest of the world? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/us/politics/how-marco-rubio-runs-venezuela.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/us/politics/how-marco-rub... "The secretary of state effectively controls Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government. His grip on the country is a vivid manifestation of American power in the Trump era." This is but one of many examples of the broad reach of American control over other countries' policies.

theturtle 2mo ago

[dead]